two sylvia plath poems

poem 1: Letter in November
Love, the world
Suddenly turns, turns color. The streetlight
Splits through the rat's tail
Pods of the laburnum at nine in the morning.
It is the Arctic,

This little black
Circle, with its tawn silk grasses -- babies hair.
There is a green in the air,
Soft, delectable.
It cushions me lovingly.

I am flushed and warm.
I think I may be enormous,
I am so stupidly happy,
My Wellingtons
Squelching and squelching through the beautiful red.

This is my property.
Two times a day
I pace it, sniffing
The barbarous holly with its viridian
Scallops, pure iron,

And the wall of the old corpses.
I love them.
I love them like history.
The apples are golden,
Imagine it ---
My seventy trees
Holding their gold-ruddy balls
In a thick gray death-soup,
Their million
Gold leaves metal and breathless.

O love, O celibate.
Nobody but me
Walks the waist high wet.
The irreplaceable
Golds bleed and deepen, the mouths of Thermopylae.

I chose this poem as I found it to be a opposite poem compared to a usual more depressive poem by Sylvia. This poem is more positive for example "I am flushed and warm. I think I may be enormous, I am so stupidly happy,My Wellingtons Squelching and squelching through the beautiful red." This could be written in a time period when Sylvia Plath was more happy.

second poem: Lady Lazarus
I have done it again.

One year in every ten

I manage it——

A sort of walking miracle, my skin

Bright as a Nazi lampshade,

My right foot

A paperweight,
My face a featureless, fine

Jew linen.

Peel off the napkin

O my enemy.

Do I terrify?——

The nose, the eye pits, the full set of teeth?

The sour breath
Will vanish in a day.

Soon, soon the flesh
The grave cave ate will be

At home on me

And I a smiling woman.

I am only thirty.
And like the cat I have nine times to die.

This is Number Three.

What a trash
To annihilate each decade.

What a million filaments.

The peanut-crunching crowd

Shoves in to see

Them unwrap me hand and foot——
The big strip tease.

Gentlemen, ladies

These are my hands

My knees.
I may be skin and bone,

Nevertheless, I am the same, identical woman.

The first time it happened I was ten.

It was an accident.

The second time I meant
To last it out and not come back at all.

I rocked shut

As a seashell.
They had to call and call
And pick the worms off me like sticky pearls.

Dying
Is an art, like everything else.

I do it exceptionally well.

I do it so it feels like hell.

I do it so it feels real.
I guess you could say I’ve a call.

It’s easy enough to do it in a cell.
It’s easy enough to do it and stay put.

It’s the theatrical

Comeback in broad day
To the same place, the same face, the same brute

Amused shout:

‘A miracle!’
That knocks me out.

There is a charge

For the eyeing of my scars, there is a charge

For the hearing of my heart——
It really goes.

And there is a charge, a very large charge

For a word or a touch

Or a bit of blood

Or a piece of my hair or my clothes.

So, so, Herr Doktor.

So, Herr Enemy.

I am your opus,
I am your valuable,

The pure gold baby

That melts to a shriek.

I turn and burn.
Do not think I underestimate your great concern.

Ash, ash—
You poke and stir.
Flesh, bone, there is nothing there——

A cake of soap,

A wedding ring,

A gold filling.

Herr God, Herr Lucifer

Beware
Beware.

Out of the ash
I rise with my red hair

And I eat men like air.

I found this poem interesting to read and I was also able to understand it which I usually dont with poems. This is about Sylvia's suicide attempts as you see she says "The second time I meant
To last it out and not come back at all.I rocked shut" I think the poem overall is depressing and not positive as it talks about death.